'THEY'RE KILLING INNOCENTS' – Teen killed while delivering food

Relatives of Kaylon Jacob, an 18-year-old businessman of La Horquetta, are asking why gunmen shot him dead as he was leaving his home to deliver food to a relative patronising his grill business.

The young entrepreneur’s mother, Kerry-Ann Jacob, said he wasn’t involved in gang activities and he did not have any enemies.

“My son did not have any reason to look back, because he didn’t have any enemies. He simply went to do a delivery for his cousin. He wasn’t expecting anyone to do him anything.”

Jacob, from Winston Mulligan Drive, Phase Four, La Horquetta, was walking along Ken Morris Avenue, on the way to make the delivery when he was approached by gunmen and shot several times.

Police got the report of the shooting but when they responded, they found him dead – lying on his stomach in the road in a pool of blood. His mother said when she last saw him he was preparing the meal for delivery.

Jacob's mother said, “He goes on Instagram and says when his food business is open. He stays open late, so he would be up at any hour. And when someone messages him, he will do whatever they want and they could either collect it or he would deliver.

“He did four deliveries for the night already, and I told him I needed the car because I had to go to Arima.”

“At the same time, his cousin called and asked for two corn dogs and a portion of fries. She asked if he could bring the food to her home in Phase 2 with the car, but I said I was going out, so deliveries finished. But Jacob said he would get someone to walk with him.

"I left him frying the fries and the corn dogs were in the air fryer.”

She said she left to meet a friend just around the corner from their house when she got the call that he was dead.

“I jumped back in the vehicle and headed to the scene and I saw my son there. I saw the box he was carrying for his cousin on the ground. I said in front the officers and the spectators this is a box with two corn dogs and a portion of fries, he was carrying this for his cousin.

"Then I opened the box and showed everyone, that was exactly what was in the box.”

She described her son as a very industrious and entrepreneurial young man. From as young as seven years he danced with Candice Clarke Dance Academy. He represented his secondary school, Bon Air Secondary, in swimming competitions.

After leaving Bon Air he joined the Civil Conservation Corps, where he got a certificate in barbering. He worked as a barber out of his home, along with the grill business, despite losing his father to covid19.

“Ever since he never wanted to work for anyone,” the mother said. “Recently he decided he wanted to do a food business because he liked tenders and fries, and decided he didn’t want to buy it anymore, he would rather sell it.”

Jacob’s mother called for an end to violence and crime, saying that her son did not deserve to die the way he did.

“If my son was in a gang and he lived by the gun and died by the gun; I would say okay, that is the way he lived and that is the way he must go.

"But that wasn’t the way he lived.

"This thing that is going on where they are just going around killing innocent people’s children, I don’t know for what reason, they have to just stop it. I am fed up with crime.”

At about 11.30, less than two hours after Jacob’s murder 45-year-old Darryl Bridgelal, a fruit vendor from College Road ext, St Augustine, was killed.

Police said Bridgelal was vending at a fruit shed along the Eastern Main Road St Augustine near Bamba nightclub and Unipet, when a silver car pulled along the entrance to the bar and two men armed with guns got out.

They then approached Bridgelal and shot him several times. He ran a short distance then fell to the ground.